It was a beautiful crisp fall Saturday morning as hundreds of volunteers spent hours in a church gym in McLean, Virginia, packing food for the hungry a world away.
Around 1,200 volunteers packed 200,000 meals at the Rise Against Hunger event at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer on Chain Bridge Road.
“There’s lots of people here that you get to see from the community and know that you’re helping out globally,” said Patricia Engle, a volunteer at the event.
The volunteers funneled dehydrated rice, veggies and soy into bags with nutritional supplements that are then sealed up, boxed up and loaded onto a shipping container.
“It’s able to serve any culture, any dietary restrictions,” said Pam Love, the National Capital area manager with Rise Against Hunger. “It’s halal, vegetarian, gluten-free. And then we have the vitamin packet to top it off. So we have all spectrums of the macronutrients.”
These particular meals will be shipped to the Philippines for a school feeding program called Convoy of Hope.
“Children are going to school strictly to have these meals,” said Love. “So it starts with a meal, and that’s our motto. But it doesn’t end there because by these children going to school every day for these meals, they’re also receiving an education.”
McLean has hosted the event since 2010 when Bob and Barb Hahne brought the event there.
Roberta Pittman who helped coordinate the event, told WTOP that Bob Hahne had just died earlier in the week and volunteers were carrying on the tradition to honor his contributions to end world hunger.
“We have to honor him and Barb for what they’ve done,” said Pittman. “As of today we’ve packaged more than three and a half million meals over the course of the many events, and it’s because of them and their dedication to the project.”
The meals will be packed up in a shipping container and shipped from Norfolk, Virginia, next week.
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